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She liked to have boys snuggle down by her; and so Thyrsis spent the whole of one evening, sitting in a summer-house with an arm about her waist, dissolved in a sort of moon-calf sentimentalism. And then he passed the rest of the night wandering about in the forest cursing himself, with tears of shame and vexation in his eyes.
Why didn't I say firmly, "You have no right to such secrets, and I demand of you to tell me what this means," instead of standing gaping at her, like an old moon-calf as I am! But there's my weakness. I can be obstinate enough with men if need be, but women may twist me round their fingers at their pleasure.
However, in the course of these new inspections into matters long since obsolete, there did what may truly be considered as a kind of profit by this Resuscitating of the moon-calf MATINEES upon afflicted mankind, and is a net outcome from it, real, though very small some light rise as to the origin and genesis of MATINEES; some twinkles of light, and, in the utterly dark element, did disclose other monstrous extinct shapes looming to right and left of said monster: and, in a word, the Authorship of MATINEES, and not of MATINEES only, becomes now at last faintly visible or guessable.
Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the swallow above." By this time Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels.
The luxurious idlers of that day were polluted with infamous vices; and Drayton, in the "Moon-calf," has elaborately drawn full-length pictures of the lady and the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have required the darkening tints of satire to be hideous in one line the Muse describes "the most prodigious birth" He's too much woman and She's too much man.
I had supposed that the words cuckold and moon-calf had none but literary usage in America, but we often hear them in the mountains, cuckold being employed both as verb and as noun, and moon-calf in its baldly literal sense that would make Prospero's taunt to Caliban a superlative insult. Our highlander often speaks in Elizabethan or Chaucerian or even pre-Chaucerian terms.
But argument there was on it, by persons capable and willing, more than one: and in result this surprising brand-new London moon-calf of a MATINEES was smitten through, and slit in pieces, for the fifth time, as if that could have hurt it much! "MIT DER DUMMHEIT," sings Schiller; "Human Stupidity is stronger than the very Gods."
He had been told nothing of it. A note from Cicely Bourne had been brought to him that morning by one of the gardeners at the Manor and he showed this missive to both Roxmouth and Longford with perfect frankness. It merely ran: "Goodbye Moon-calf! Am going away. No time to see you for a fond farewell! Hope you will be famous before I come back.
"I salute a gallant soldier, a gallant sailor, and my friend Monsieur Moon-calf!" he said, and stood, the water to his ankles, and hilt to his lips. On the ridge the man-pack was at the worry. Suddenly a face gleamed up through the thick of them. "Sir!" screamed a voice. The Parson started round. "Knapp!" he cried, with sickening face. "Put back!" A hand was on his shoulder. It was Kit.
"But, by these ten finger-bones! it is a passing strange thing to me to think that it was but in the last fall of the leaf that we walked from Lyndhurst together, he so gentle and maidenly, and you, John, like a great red-limbed overgrown moon-calf; and now here you are as sprack a squire and as lusty an archer as ever passed down the highway from Bordeaux, while I am still the same old Samkin Aylward, with never a change, save that I have a few more sins on my soul and a few less crowns in my pouch.
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